


Gasoline

by angelfacedfemmeboy



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Addiction, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6151133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelfacedfemmeboy/pseuds/angelfacedfemmeboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Evans was a drug addict.  He could admit that, but he didn't think of it in the same way as everyone else did.  He did rely on it, but to focus and unwind.  He's pretty sure his grades are better when he does his homework or takes a test high.  He used a lot, but he wasn't some deadbeat.</p><p>-</p><p>When Sam accepts his parent's insisting that he go into rehab, he does it to learn to use less, not stop all together.  But then he meets Kurt and by association Finn, none the less any of the other patients.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gasoline

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the start of this chapter - up to Sam's first conversation with Kurt - more detailed and it was all nice and then I tried to save it as a draft and it all got deleted so excuse the choppy beginning.

Walking through the building now, he's starting to feel out of place. He _couldn't_ belong here. The nurse leading him explained that there were many different types of recovery happening there, which he guessed made sense. There was something unsettling about a place like this though. The property was huge, everything inside was made up of light colors, and out back there was a garden with a small man-made river running through it. Most of the appearance is for calming, like how hospitals were covered in white. That made sense. Away from the front desk lead into a large room with various sitting areas of light brown furniture, to the right there was a set of double doors, and in the back there was a hallway that Sam was now walking down.

Sam Evans was a drug addict. He could admit that, but he didn't think of it in the same way as everyone else did. He did rely on it, but to focus and unwind. He's pretty sure his grades are better when he does his homework or takes a test high. He used a lot, but he wasn't some deadbeat. He could take care of his siblings just as much and as well as he did when he was clean, he still got at least as good of grades as before, he was going to graduate when this was over. He wasn't that great at remembering to bathe though, andnd he started getting caught the more he used. Usually it was just pot, but that didn't matter to anyone. His parents were heartbroken when they caught on, telling him how shocked they were over how 'bad' he had gotten. It wasn't bad at all. He knew guys who did so much worse.  
For a while it was almost always just him and his younger brother and sister. His parents both had to work as much as possible to keep afloat, and eventually Sam did too. It worked decently enough. He's not sure when exactly he started getting high but it took the edge off of things. Given what they've been through - going from a family of five with children in private schools to a hotel room - he'd be shocked if he heard the same story with anyone completely sober in his position. He felt more like a third parent than a brother half of the time.

It was when he got back to Ohio that other problems started happening, but the party scene wasn't his style or good for anyone anyway. Maybe he was using more than he needed, and he could admit that it wasn't his best move to try new things. A few incidences and a couple of months later and he was being confronted.  
He'd call it an addition, because that's what they said, but that's not what it was. When he turns eighteen he has every intention of leaving this place.

"Bedroom doors have to stay open until curfew, just to be safe." His thoughts were snapped away from his surroundings then. Exactly what kind of patients were there? Considering his bag got checked when he was signed in, Sam doesn't really see why that would be necessary but it makes him far more worried than he was on the way.  
The hallway only had four rooms, each with a patient belonging to them. At the end was a set of stairs that lead to another hall of six bedrooms larger than the ones on the first floor.

"All of these rooms up here are designed for two people, so you'll be having a roommate." The woman explained. "He's been here a little while but he's not much older than you." They stopped outside of the last room on the left, and she tapped on the door with the back of her knuckles to get the other boy's attention. "Kurt, this is Sam, he'll be your new roommate." Her tone was even kinder than when she was addressing Sam.

Kurt was thin, bundled up in a soft purple and black sweater paired with light grey jeans. He sat indian-style on the bed on the left side of the room almost directly in front of the door, a notebook on his lap and his body hunched over it. When he lifted his head, Sam caught light eyes before his gaze moved first to the coif of chestnut hair, then to the sharp slope of the boy's neck.  
He didn't look sick. Slim and pale but not sickly. He looked put together. Sam showed up in a random, thin, long-sleeved shirt and pair of jeans, coupled with hair that was getting a little longer than he usually kept it. His hygiene was down, and he never thought about his clothes before, but he took care of his body.  
Kurt on the other hand, the closest thing to a tell he had was the collar of his sweater hanging low enough at the angle to get a glimpse of how prominent his collarbone was. Sam would have thought he was just a lean kid otherwise.

"Could you show him around later?" The woman asked, addressing Kurt. He looked Sam over before giving her a nod.  
"Sure."  
"Great." She turned back to Sam. "If you have any questions, Kurt can probably answer them but you can come find me any time. I'll be making sure you've heard all of our rules in the morning, but for now just get settled. Alright?"  
"Yes ma'am." He nodded, gave a soft smile to match hers, and stepped into the room when she turned to leave. He dumped his backpack on the empty bed and sat beside it. When he looked at Kurt again, the boy was back to drawing in his book. It was kind of hard to believe that he was older than Sam like he was told. He looked tiny all huddled up like that.  
" _So_ , what're you in for?"  
"Take a wild guess." Kurt didn't look up from his book, but he didn't sound dismissive.

Sam had two theories come to mind. "You a junkie?" He tried first. He knows the junkie stereotype was pretty accurate a lot of the time. It depended on their lifestyle and choice of drug as well though. Sam didn't do the ' _hard stuff_ ' unless he was having a particularly bad day, and he wasn't going to let himself waste away. He still stuck to his usual workouts, and most of the food in the house was clean. Funny enough, he didn't really think about it anymore though. Not like when he was clean.  
"Nope."  
"Do you like, not eat?"  
"Bingo." Kurt sing-songed. Sam's small smile faltered. In retrospect, he guessed it was no better or worse than if the kid had a drug problem. But if it were drugs maybe they could talk about it, maybe he had tips for Sam to make this all easier. He knew he'd have to be clean while in the place and the approaching heroin withdrawals might be easier if someone else had been through them and could explain instead of some doctor. Anorexia was something completely different.

"What about you?" Kurt spoke up again. The pause of silence must have been revealing enough to Sam's thought process.  
"Oh, junkie here." He didn't really like saying it like that, but it made it easier.  
Kurt hummed thoughtfully. "Gone through withdrawal yet?"  
"No. It's easier when you don't do much but pot, right?" He asked more hopefully than he wanted to.  
Kurt gave a small shrug and glanced over at him. "I'm not an expert. There are and have been addicts here, they all say weed was a gateway to what got them thrown in. It was pretty rough for them."

Kurt was not helping Sam's nerves in the slightest. Kurt was somewhat blunt though, it seemed, and that could come in handy. At least he'd give to to him straight.  
"Don't look so nervous. This place isn't that bad." Kurt said with a small grin. He closed his book and set it aside before hopping off the bed. "Come on." When he stood straight, he proved to be almost the same height as Sam, with broad shoulders. He adjusted his sweater so the collar was wider instead of hanging low. Sam followed him out of the room and back to the stairs as he spoke.  
"You'll get everyone's names eventually, don't worry about it. We all have private and group therapy sessions, group is where you'll figure out who's who." They made their way down the stairs and into the room with all of the couches again. "Pretty much the only place anyone goes when not in their rooms. There's the cafeteria," He gestured to the double doors. "Meals are scheduled, but there's choices. Mostly." Kurt added in a murmur. "There's a bathroom upstairs and one over there." He motioned to a door near the front of the room. "No smoking, drugs, drinking, or sharp objects. They go on a lot about how you have to want to get better for it to happen and if you're caught with any of that then clearly you don't want it and they'll start watching you closer until you feel insane."

Sam glanced around when Kurt explained what was where, but otherwise he was watching the smaller boy. Kurt folded his arms over his chest and cocked his hip out when he was stood still.  
"You can go outside whenever you want but you can't leave the property. The only place you can go after curfew is the bathroom." He finished with a small shrug. "Just don't fight with anyone and you'll be fine.. Visiting hours are from lunch to dinner most days but that privilege might be revoked if you break any rules. Oh and there's a break room for the staff attached to the cafeteria. Don't go in but if you need something you can knock on the door." Sam nodded along.

It didn't sound too bad, really. Sam was more worried about the withdrawals than anything else. He could make it there just fine. He'd probably have to find excuses to be quiet during group but that would be handled one way or another. He didn't want a bunch of strangers with issues way worse than his knowing how he feels or what his life is like. Just because things looked up didn't mean he wanted to talk about things at home. He loved his family, he wasn't embarrassed, but what they've bene through was their business and theirs alone.

Kurt nudged his arm the back of his hand. "I'm going back to our room." He said simply and started towards the stairs. With one last look around the room, Sam turned to follow. Back in their room, Kurt sat on his bed just as he had been before and continued his drawing. Sam leaned over the bed as he passed to try and get a look at it.  
"What's that?"  
"A design." Kurt said simply. There was definitely a shirt on the page but he did only get a glimpse of it. It was kind of impressive, Sam thinks. Not everyone can actually make clothes or furniture.  
"That's pretty cool." He said honestly. Maybe he wouldn't normally use cool for clothing designs, but it was neat. Cool probably sounded nicer though, and being rude to his roommate would be pretty inconvenient.

"If you're going to make fun of me you can skip this nice first impression thing and say it to my face. _Believe it or not_ , I've heard it all before." Kurt said dismissively. Very dismissively, actually. Sam wasn't one to make fun of people though. He even managed to get along with the football team without joining in on their bullying. He was likable, what could he say?  
"I wasn't gonna." He explained with a shrug. "I couldn't design anything. Pretty cool not many people do it."  
Kurt looked at him curiously for a moment before sighing softly. "I suppose that's true. Thanks."

That was all they said for a while. Sam put in his earbuds and started unpacking his clothes into the drawers under the mattress. Between the tunes and his thoughts, he didn't need to pull out a notebook to be occupied for a few hours. He ran through just about everything he could think to think of; his parents, his siblings, what did they really think of him now, would they visit often, what if he got the right revoked, what would he do to make that happen, what were the other patients like, more like himself or like Kurt or mostly completely different things, would he get along with any of them, Kurt was alright even if he did seem a little quirky... That's was when he looked at the other boy again. By that point he had sat back with his knees drawn up to prop his book. He was writing now instead of drawing, and Sam's eyes studied him again. Completely neutral expression and eyes locked onto the page, nimble fingers holding the pages open while his other hand wrote, and at the end of his lean legs were striped socks on his feet.

With a small grin on his face, Sam asked, "What's with the socks?" Because Kurt was so strangely put together that socks that didn't even match just seemed odd. Kurt only shrugged.  
For some reason Sam thinks it may be a loony thing, because these places were for people with problems and maybe Kurt needed something weird too. What that had to with his socks in relation to his eating disorder, Sam had no clue, but he was going with it.

"Do you just not talk much or..?" He continued on.  
"Not always." Kurt drawled, more intent on finishing the line he was writing than anything else, obviously. "Depends on my mood I guess." He added before closing the book and shifting onto his stomach. He leaned over the edge of the bed and pulled out one of the drawers, the bottom of which was covered by two more notebooks and spools of thread, hidden underneath a folded blanket and another sweater. Under the blanket is where he tucked the book he had been using.  
Clearly he knew what Sam was going to ask when he started speaking again. "I like to sew, sometimes clothes tear, sometimes someone let's me alter their poorly fitting wardrobe, I keep thread in handy. We're not allowed to keep anything sharp though so I have to ask for needles or scissors. The notebooks are for designs mostly."

"We all get journals too. It's part of therapy. If you don't want to talk to the therapist you can write it down or just have a place to put your thoughts or something like that."  
"Huh.. Why have a diary instead of talking to the therapist? I mean isn't that kinda the point _of_ a therapist? Talking to 'em?" Kurt snorted, moving back to sit facing Sam with his back to the wall.  
"My thoughts exactly. It's all very contradictory. They want us to talk about our feelings but they also give us a way of getting those feelings out without talking. And if you don't talk then you probably aren't making progress but if you actually talk about how you feel when you feel like shit then you're still not making progress because people who are getting better don't feel like shit I guess."

"So.." Sam sat up and turned to face Kurt as well. "Can you get out of here if you just talk about how much better you're doing?"  
"Something like that. It's happened before." Kurt shrugged again. "I'm not sure exactly how they've done it but if you put in the time to make up a story to tell them, how you're struggling, then how you're getting better, good days bad days whatever, it might work. I might not be the best to ask since I clearly can't pull it off."  
"Why no--" Right. Kurt starved himself. Monitored meals and weighing made it pretty obvious if he was lying. "Heh, right. That sucks man."

Kurt wasn't so bad. He'd at least be cool to have as a roommate while Sam was here. If all it took to get out was a couple of months of telling the doctors he's struggling, and then feeling ok, he might not even need to rely on his birthday. He was a decent actor. And his family would be so much more proud of him if he got released instead of bailing when he's old enough. Maybe the doctors would even give them progress reports or something. He's not really sure how all of that works. For now though he'd be alright.


End file.
